So I passed my test.

I had procrastinated over learning to drive. The simple issue was that, to learn to drive, if you want to learn with one instructor, you need to be in the same place for at least six months. For two years after I left university I was living in constant imminent danger of getting a job and having to move to another city, so I held off. Obviously, if I'd known I was going to spend two years in Nottingham, I'd have cracked on with it, but foolishly I thought my employment prospects were pretty good.

So in December 2007 I got my current work-from-home gig and in June 2008, work being steady, I finally stopped putting it off and phoned up my old instructor Pat Kuffel.

Pat had come very highly recommended, having taught my sister and a few other friends of mine, having 30 years' experience instructing, driving examiner training, advanced driving training with the fire service, and so on. I'd had ten lessons with him way back in 2004 but for whatever reason I kind of dropped out. Those first 10 lessons or so were parent-funded but the new ones were going to be out of my own pocket so that had also been cause for hesitation.

I hadn't really suffered for waiting so long. After my first lesson - Sam's Driving Lessons vol. 2 #1 - I was pretty much back up to where I'd been previously. I thought it would be very straightforward.

Naturally, within a matter of months I was accepted by IBM and suddenly I was looking at a December 2008 deadline. The alternative would be to pick up my lessons later in Winchester, with another instructor. I took two hours' driving a week, booked my test in late October and took it on 25 November, first thing in the morning.

The map of my route can be found here in Google Maps form. We drive on the left in the UK in case you're not sure which direction to follow the blue lines.

Colwick Test Centre is a very new construction and doesn't appear on the Google satellite images as yet. The test routes themselves are also pretty new. In my lessons we'd practiced the various routes into and out of the test centre's locale, of which you can see there are only a limited number. There are only two routes out of Colwick Business Park at all.

The UK driving test works like this. The test starts (after an instant eye test, "read the number plate of that car over there, please") with a few questions about various features and functions of the car. These are picked from a set of about two dozen which I'd been provided with beforehand, although remembering things by rote from a paper list is an experience I haven't had since secondary school Chemistry tests. I was asked to point out the brake fluid bottle and explain how to check it, as well as the nefarious tyre safety question (1.6mm depth all the way around the circumference and across the middle 3/4 of the tyre's width; check the tyre wall for cuts and bulges). You only get a minor fault for getting these wrong, but I didn't.

You can accrue a total of 15 minor faults on a driving test. The 16th one results in a failure. The faults are all marked on a sheet of paper by the examiner and fall into various categories. More than 3 or 4 faults in the same category also adds up to a failure. A serious fault in any category is also an instantaneous failure.

I'm a decent driver. There's no point attempting the test if you aren't expecting to pass it, after all, and Pat wouldn't have let me if he wasn't fairly confident in me. I wasn't concerned about accruing too many minors. The scary ones are the major faults: for example, failing to stop at a STOP sign (which you didn't see because you were paying attention to something else), not stopping at a zebra crossing when there are pedestrians waiting to cross (which you didn't see because you were paying attention to something else), hitting the kerb while reversing (even at very low speed) and of course the most catastrophic of events: somebody doing something utterly stupid in front of you, and you not reacting quickly enough due to your inexperience. These are things which can leap out on you without warning at any moment, and they write off the entire test, a combined total of nearly £100 when you add together the price of the test and the instructor's time.

Interacting with the examiner was a strange experience. I'd been well-informed that driving examiners have to use specific phrases and wording when they give you instructions on the test, but this guy seemed to be an automaton, reading off an internal script, not even making eye contact with me. On the one hand it was a little off-putting not to have someone friendly to chat with in the passenger seat, but on the other hand I guess there is no use for an examiner to be all polite and friendly when, 50% of the time, they're going to tell you that you failed when you return to the test centre. "How could you fail me? I thought you were my friend!" Despite it I reckoned he was a nice guy, merely a nice guy doing his job.

I stalled pulling out of the parking bay at the test centre. One minor fault for control when moving off. What a great start. We took the first of the two exits from the business park. Before you start you're told that unless instructions to the contrary are given, you're supposed to follow the road ahead. Doing this led me on a winding route which I'd traversed many times before, through the middle of Netherfield. Netherfield is a driving nightmare, full of tricky routes and mini roundabouts and one-way streets and zebra crossings. You take the whole thing in second gear and you have to be alert. The first roundabout is a great example. I forgot to signal until the very last possible second, only putting it on for a single blink as I was leaving the roundabout entirely. Catastrophe, I thought. Failure to signal. I'd sat there in the queue for however many seconds and I should have been indicating. I thought the test was all over right then (and I'd given myself fifty-fifty odds starting out), so nothing else mattered. I was furious with myself. But we pressed on.

As it turned out, I'd got away with it. I knew this roundabout was odd because it has three entrances but only two exits. This is because one entrance is coming from a one-way street. In other words, if you approach the roundabout from the direction I did, there is no way you can go other than to turn left. There is no other exit available to you. So indicating wasn't necessary! Magical. I did know this about the roundabout at the time, but I didn't know that not signalling was okay.

The right turn from Station Road onto Conway Road is absolutely deadly. It's a blind right turn, uphill. You can't see what's coming. The road ahead of me was clear but, heck, I didn't know for sure, so I did the safer (or at least more hesitant) thing and stopped to look. This was fine. I believe it may have earned me one of the two minor faults for "undue hesitation" which I received, but hey, I'm inexperienced, and hesitation is about the "best" minor fault you can get. The other thing about that turn is that there is a zebra crossing immediately after it. If you're not looking where you're going, but up the road at the oncoming traffic, you could easily kill someone. It's a terrible place to put a zebra crossing. Still, no problems there.

At this point I also realised I hadn't been using my mirrors enough up to now either, or concentrating on lane positioning (which Pat had been grilling me for during the trip out). Again, I thought I'd probably failed, but either the examiner didn't notice or these were oversights not worthy of marking. Or maybe my lane positioning was good anyway. Who knows.

There was a "compulsory" stop on Conway Road - this was performed just to make sure that I knew how to stop and pull away again safely on the flat. There was another one on Freemans Road, which is a hill - this one was to check my hill start. After this it was fairly smooth sailing around onto Colwick Loop Road and up towards the river - the famous "river run" which Pat and I had also practiced more than once.

Stoke Lane is a long rural road which oscillates between a 60mph limit and a 30mph limit. Most of the 60mph areas are incredibly twisty and you'd be crazy to exceed fifty. Still, I think it was somewhere around here that I ended up at 35mph in a 30mph zone and got myself a minor for "use of speed". Apparently more people fail for going to slowly than too fast, though.

In Stoke Bardolph we stopped again and I was told we'd be trying an emergency stop. Only one in three driving tests has one of these on, but they're also dead easy. Hitting the brake as hard as you can and then the clutch as an afterthought is easy - especially since the examiner stops you to warn you beforehand, then ostentatiously checks behind to make sure nothing is about to ram us from behind when he shouts "STOP". The only place you're likely to get marked is moving off again: you have to check not three points but five (left shoulder, left mirror, main mirror, right mirror, right shoulder) for approaching vehicles.

Once past the river we turned left and cruised back towards the test centre along the new bypass/loop road/whatever you want to call it. It's all 40mph with very few distractions, easy as pie. I was instructed to "follow the signs for Victoria Business Park" which is something the examiner does sometimes as an alternative to giving an explicit direction. We went around two roundabouts and did some manoeuvres. There are three manoeuvres that can be part of the UK test - turn in road, reverse around a corner and reverse parking. You do two of the three. "Reverse parking" actually works out to two different manoeuvres in practice, though; one is reversing around a parked vehicle, the other is reversing into a bay. So you have to learn four.

We started off with reversing around a corner, from Drake Road into Mallard Road - Pat and I had practiced that exact manoeuvre at that exact location so smart work there. This was pretty simple. There was a white van parked near the corner in Mallard Road and I made a judgement call and reversed up to it instead of around it. It turned out this was fine. During lessons I'd never had this happen. Pat had picked corners with nobody parked nearby on purpose. I don't know if this was an examiner oversight or whether it's procedure. I did get a minor fault for observation at this point, but reversing around a corner is amazingly difficult to get right in this respect because there are so many directions to check.

We went around the roundabout another 270 degrees and did a turn-in-road in what I guess is an extension of Victoria Park Way although Google Maps doesn't seem to say. This was textbook. Again, Pat had had me practice there before. The man knows his stuff.

And from there it was back to the test centre. I nearly forgot to indicate coming off the second roundabout, but again, I must have got away with it. Later along the way, I somehow wound up in fourth gear at a set of traffic lights when I meant to be in second, which was a minor blunder. I might have got away with it but I did the exact same thing again less than sixty seconds later! I was kicking myself. Got one more minor for this.

I think it was the last left turn before getting back to the test centre where I got my second minor fault for undue hesitation. A lorry was turning into the road that I was pulling out of, or something. I don't really remember and that may not have been it anyway.

So we pulled back into the test centre and he said "relax for a minute while I add up your marks" which is hilarious because he already knows for a fact whether you've failed or not. He said I'd passed and I said, and I quote, "You've got to be kidding me". I thought I'd failed in the first five minutes, remember?

He took my provisional licence and presumably my full one is in the post by now. Good times.

I still think I may have got lucky. No cyclists, no road works, no unexpected activity by other road users, and according to Pat, that specific examiner can be difficult to impress. As I said, I had anticipated a 50% chance of failure. I had one spare week before my first day at IBM so I was banking on being able to make a second attempt this week, but even then, I could have failed a second time. That would have been quite a setback as I'd have had to practically start again in Winchester, learning the new roads. As it is, this is a major tick in a major box for me. "And relax..."

I promised Pat I'd give him a writeup so here it is: Pat Kuffel School of Motoring, Nottingham, UK. His mobile number is 0797 195 7722. He knows his stuff. Tell him you got the recommendation from Sam Hughes' blog. He'll ask you what a blog is.